The Daily Life Of A Cyberpunk Magician

Chapter 166 - 143 A Bit of Thought and... Fox Hunting
Chapter 166: Chapter 143 A Bit of Thought and... Fox Hunting”Baglas...” Jiang Shu muttered.

If there was any magic in this world that truly baffled people, it surely had to be this one.

An extraordinarily simple process, yet extraordinarily powerful in effect.

The trick’s entire process involved no contact, which made it particularly impervious to fault-finding.

It appeared as if the magician did nothing, but the untouched playing cards displayed a terrifying magical effect; the random numbers and cards spoken by the audience were predicted by the deck.

It seemed that resorting to sleight of hand was the only explanation.

But obviously, it couldn’t be such a low-level tactic, or it wouldn’t have troubled so many excellent magicians.

Perhaps, perhaps a sufficiently sophisticated automatic device could perform such magic, allowing the cards to autonomously change suits and values or change the order of the deck without anyone noticing.

But such a device would seem too miraculous.

In fact, Jiang Shu, relying on his derivative entry of paper card technique, could easily produce the Baglas Effect and even perform some clever maneuvers that would astound Baglas himself.

But what was the point?

Clearly, there wasn’t any.

Jiang Shu valued the Baglas Effect for a simple reason: the actual process of the trick was simple enough, while the actual effect was powerful enough.

This way, with adept use of this magic process, given his level, he could freely repackage the process and effortlessly conjure magic related to the spirit.

Mind reading, thought transmission, thought control, hypnosis, prediction, and so on—essentially, any ability concerning the mind, he could wrap up and use directly with little effort.

The most crucial part was that there was no need to worry about being debunked.

Other magic tricks might be at risk of being exposed, but the Baglas Effect was different—it really was... a very special type.

The last person to come close to the original version, if not surpassing it, was named Qian, who was also acclaimed as the only person to decode Baglas in the past fifty years; even Baglas himself, present in the audience of the magic performance, had nothing but praise.

Such a magical effect, if someone from Lonely City could unravel it, Jiang Shu might as well bid farewell to his career in magic.

Baglas himself also guided a magic writer to complete a lengthy tutorial on magic, about ACAAN and the Baglas Effect, and this book...

Jiang Shu had read it too, but overall...

He felt complicated.

The book was also hailed as the Bible of Magic in the magic community; whether you were a master or a novice, there was no distinction in the face of this book because it did not involve any conventional magic techniques.

Even the simplest methods in the book required one or two years of repetitive practice to possibly master, due to the extensive, tedious memory training involved.

For example, memorizing the order of an entire deck of cards within seconds...

Such a memory ability was quite absurd, but if one had a Prosthetic Eye, it could save time on this step.

However, Baglas himself did not have a Prosthetic Eye, and even in publishing the book, he still held back, not revealing the cleanest original Baglas Effect.

He’d probably take the secret to his grave.

In the book and in fact, there were related rules that were widely circulated.

For example, Baglas wouldn’t rely on forced choice to hit a number. Generally, if you ask someone to think of a number between one and ten, there’s a high probability they’ll think of 6, 7, or 8, which makes it easy for a prepared magician to ”hit.”

For instance, he wouldn’t depend on Psychological Suggestion to make the spectator name a common suit or value. Ordinary spectators are more likely to mention the Ace of Spades, while a magician spectator might choose the Seven of Clubs.

For example, he wouldn’t walk around with cards, nor would he subtly maneuver the selected playing card to a predetermined spot using card control techniques.

The playing cards were often placed on the table from the start or out of everyone’s sight, untouched by anyone.

However, when Jiang Shu was studying the book, he also found some interesting points.

As mentioned before, the book wasn’t written by Baglas himself but was written by a magic writer after Baglas had imparted the secrets of the magic.

Thus viewed, these widely spread rules were not directly proposed by him but carried a certain subjective color of restrictions.

These things, you could say, were prohibitions forcibly added and widely disseminated by meddlers; they couldn’t be taken as gospel.

The book also mentioned that Baglas wouldn’t announce in advance when performing this magic, and frequently, the writer didn’t even feel like he was witnessing a magic performance.

For example, on a flight, Baglas might ask him to say a number for no reason, then after some time, ask him to name any card. Upon disembarking, Baglas would suddenly open a suitcase that hadn’t been touched since boarding, have him find a deck, count to that number, and uncover that very card.

Countless such magic performances took place.

This is also very common in magic performances, especially Spirit Magic, where magicians often wouldn’t tell beforehand what they were going to do, but would use the magic effect to show you what they did.

It’s a tactic to prevent failure in magic and also to prevent invited spectators from becoming suspicious, disrupting the magic routine.

A quote from Baglas himself explains it: ”The effect of the cards is determined after the cards are revealed. In fact, it is a specific card that decides which effect will occur. Only through the use of words does the verbal illusion arise that the effect has already been announced before the card is declared. This principle is applicable to many Paper Card Magics.”